Experts Say ISIS's Female Genital Mutilation Order Is Fake

Yesterday, the U.N. resident and humanitarian coordinator in Iraq warned reporters that ISIS — the Sunni militant group taking over Iraq and Syria — had ordered 4 million women and girls in Mosul to undergo genital mutilation. Today, analysts say the written fatwa Jacqueline Badcock based her warning on is fake.

According to The Guardian, some analysts have pointed out that the edict, which is being circulated on Twitter, appears to be a year old. It's signed by the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant, and ISIS now refers to itself as the Islamic State. ThinkProgress notes that journalists in the region believe the document to be fake based on their sources.

Michael Stevens, who's been studying ISIS for the Royal United Services Institute, tells the Telegraph, "It's 100 percent not true." He explained that the fatwa was "not written in language that would likely to be used by" ISIS.

The U.N. is now "seeking clarity and trying to establish the facts." We noted yesterday that prominent Muslim groups have declared FGM "un-Islamic." The BBC has a helpful map of where FGM is still a big problem in the world: